Panel from the top of a mirror frame
Not on view
This oak panel, originally part of a room decoration, once framed the top of a large mirror. It would have been painted and possibly partially gilded but has been stripped of its original paint layers. The carved decoration is still strictly symmetrical suggesting a date of circa 1725. The female mask, crowned by flowers, symbolizes Flora.
This panel was part of the model collection of woodwork, paneling, and seat furniture of Maison Leys, a successful decorating business, located at the Place de la Madeleine in Paris. Since 1885 the business was directed by Georges Hoentschel who installed the collection in 1903 in a museum-like display at Boulevard Flandrin, Paris. Three years later, Hoentschel sold the collection to J. Pierpont Morgan who gave the panel with the rest of the decorator’s seventeenth and eighteenth-century objects to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1907.
This artwork is meant to be viewed from right to left. Scroll left to view more.